The progression of the study of T’ai Chi eventually leads us into the realm of Meditation, or the cultivation of attention. When we begin to practice, our minds tend to attend to physical details which often are verbal in nature, such as “Put the feet here”, or “Move like this, slowly and evenly”. We create a list of instructions which we can follow, and then we have a starting place from which to begin. This is a step forward from not knowing where to start, but later it can become a crutch
.
As we progress in our cultivation of the ability to
practice, we may find that in order to really attend to the immediate
situation, non-verbal qualities such as the direct perception of our balance
and our state of relaxation become far more relevant as the focus of our
attention. We may at this point find that focusing on our mental list takes us
away from focusing on the immediate internal and external environment.
This
quality of attention, that when it is processing in a verbal fashion it cannot
be in two places at once, leads us to the cultivation of an awareness of the
present moment and all its’ detail without the now “extra movements” which our
verbal descriptive processes have become. This is the realm of meditation.
At this point we might benefit from a look at the nature of
our attention. Examples of a linearly focused attention abound. It seems
obvious that we can’t attend to texting and driving at the same time. If we
look at one thing, we must stop looking at something else. When we look at our
mental list we aren’t able to attend as well to our doing of the form. When I
read my music’s words and chords I can’t really ”be present” and attend to the
quality of my performance. I can’t be in two places at one time.
One possible way around this is the non focused, raw
attention that is cultivated through meditation. The power of really being in
the present moment, in all its’ clarity and free of the descriptive filters,
opinions (I like this, I don’t like that, etc.) and old tapes that we may play
to ourselves can be immense.
This clutter of “extra movements” is often not
relevant to our immediate situation, and often detracts from our ability to
deal with what is right in front of us. The undivided meditative attention
created by our T’ai Chi practice includes both the question and the answer. By
focusing on the larger system as a whole all is included.
Although all this may seem highly theoretical and perhaps
extremely philosophical, my intention is to describe a very practical and
useful model. The above discourse may lead us to consider how the attention
might grow as our form evolves.
Our awareness of what we are may expand as we
learn to attend first to what is within our skin, then to what is within our
physical reach, and on to what is within the reach of our sight, our thoughts, and
our connections to our world.
We tend to take care of what is ours, and as our conception
of personal space expands and evolves,
we gain access to an ever larger playing field.
